This photo was taken around 8:04 p.m., looking over a valley westward towards Jasper. Photo/Dan Huth

According to Amicalola EMC reports, Pickens sidestepped the brunt of last night’s severe weather that rolled southwarwdly through north Georgia in the early evening.

“We had 4,200 members without power over seven counties, but we didn’t have that many in Pickens” said Stacey Fields, an Amicalola EMC representative. “Pickens was pretty lucky.”

Fields said storms started passing through their coverage area at about 6:30 p.m., with major power outages in Ellijay and in Dawson County near Fausett’s Lake.

“We had crews in Gilmer working over night,” she said.

In total, 550 Amicalola EMC members in Pickens were affected by outages on Wednesday night. Fields said those outages occurred in nine separate areas spread across the county.

Just before noon on Thursday, Fields said there were 980 Amicalola EMC members without power, but none of those outages were in Pickens. Those outages were spread across Dawson, Gilmer, Gordon and Murray counties.

Fields directed members to visit Amicalola EMC’s website where you can view outages in real-time.

“It’s a very good tool to have,” she said. “You can see outages in our service area and see if crews have been dispatched. It’s all in real-time and you can zoom in to street level.”

There are also numbers on the homepage to call when you report a power outage.